18 hours of thinking time

This past weekend Lars and I and the kids and two friends drove to Minot ND and back. For those not in the midwest, that is around a 9h trip each way but it is a very very easy 9 hours. The road is good, there are 3 turns, there are no cities or things that might cause a slow down (barring utter craptastraphy). There are enough gas and potty options and with 4 adults nobody even got burned out driving.

The kids are now what I would call expert road trippers. They don’t ask for tons of potty stops, they know we are not stopping, and more often than not they get food on the drive. They are well trained enough that when we were talking about dinner options on the way home they suggest Subway because it was easy to eat in the car and ‘keep moving’. They all napped and played and were 99% good the entire ride. They were really 99% good the entire trip! We visited friends with kids just their age AND a ‘big’ kid that was willing to play with them too. I hardly had to parent the whole time and I even got to sleep for 9 hours straight – something I have not done in recent memory

We had a great time with the visit on the whole. It met the criteria of us being there longer than it took to travel so good start. It also had a laid back agenda and that is nice for a change since we usually try to cram 10x what we should do into any given situation. In the evening we had a mini party with a bunch of other friends from the area that we don’t normally see/spend much time with and we played a very fun and silly game.

Other than the random meandering discussions during the visit there was also the solid 18 hours of travel to THINK. I love that time, time where I can’t be doing anything else – I can’t clean or work out or read Facebook (much), I can’t really even read because I dislike the feeling of puke. I’ve planned so many things in my head during various road trips, the perfect tent, gardens (didn’t happen, probably because I drive a lot and leave my house for a month), book ideas, what-ifs, discussions of political situation… you get the picture.

Upon our return my brain is teaming with a few projects that NEED to happen

settled on a book to work on. Not the only story in my brain but the one I talked about with a friend out there sparked him to want to co write and with that push we are off.

We need to start a YouTube channel for SCA fighting discussion, this is to help all the people in far away places get feedback. Record your fight, send it in, Lars and/or Konrad will do a reply video about what they see. I can see this going all football style with drawing on the screen and all that. Hopefully it will be helpful

A week of cool Halloween food and plans all mapped out <– this is the one that is most immediate and easy

So now I’m home, sent kids off to school, got back to the workout thing, then walked to force nap and now I have a list of items like bake bread and find kitchen and post blog (and book planning) so see you tomorrow!